


The Hope of My Redemption Is Such That I Believe That I Am Free

by pentaghastly



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cousin Incest, F/M, the wall - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They stand on the precipice of eternity, hands clasped, not speaking, never making a sound. There are moments when he thinks she may not even be breathing, not really, but he will see the rise and fall of her chest and know she’s still there, still with him. They stand on the precipice of something new, a place unknown and unheard of, and though he thinks she must be scared, there is nothing but a fire in her eyes unlike any other. The last two wolves, and what an ironic choice the gods have made in their victors -- if that is what they can be called. </p><p><em>Not victors, survivors,</em> he thinks, for if they have learned anything, it is how to best survive. How to survive, and how to destroy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hope of My Redemption Is Such That I Believe That I Am Free

They stand on the precipice of eternity, hands clasped, not speaking, never making a sound. There are moments when he thinks she may not even be breathing, not really, but he will see the rise and fall of her chest and know she’s still there, still with him. They stand on the precipice of something new, a place unknown and unheard of, and though he thinks she must be scared, there is nothing but a fire in her eyes unlike any other. The last two wolves, and what an ironic choice the gods have made in their victors -- if that is what they can be called. 

_Not victors, survivors,_ he thinks, for if they have learned anything, it is how to best survive. How to survive, and how to destroy.

“Are you cold?” he asks her, but really he only speaks to fill the silence that is no longer a comfort to him; it has gone on too long, become too thick with thoughts and words unsaid (words that will never be said, not to him.)

She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t answer him, for really no answer is needed. War and death and solitude have frozen her veins, turning her blood to ice, her skins from porcelain to ivory to steel. There is no cold that can penetrate through the barrier that has become her flesh, nothing that will slip through the flawless foundation of her complexion. Of course, Jon has seen past that now, forced his way under her skin and into her bones, but in the first few weeks she had been impassable, unreachable, untouchable.

(Sansa is not that now. He has touched her, felt her, been within her and alongside her, although he has never done more than link his arm through hers as he escorts her across the yard, held her hand at the top of the wall. He already knows her like the back of his hand, and it frightens him almost as much as he is sure it frightens her.)

She kneels in the snow, back to him, hands clasped, and he thinks that against the white blanket that surrounds them, she looks to be a splatter of blood in the snow, a harsh red stain against the blank canvas she kneels before. Her and the weirwood, symbols of the North, both the color of blood and death. It is nothing to laugh at, the destruction of home, the desecration of war, but he finds himself with a smile on his face, if only at the absurdity of the unfortunate parallel he has drawn.

“Thank you for taking me,” she says, her voice tight and sounding as if in pain, although he cannot think why. “I know it is a far trip to make in the cold, and you have much more important things to do.”

“None more important than assisting my sister,” he assures her, placing his hand on her shoulder, although he cannot help but think that she is his _cousin_ now. Jon still has yet to tell her of his true lineage, has yet to tell anyone, but he thinks she must be first. (Tonight, he will do it, behind closed doors and without the intrusive eyes of his brothers on their backs. Tonight he will be a cousin, but today he must be a brother, for he is the only one she has left, and she needs a brother for this). And she still has made no move to pray, still is kneeling and looking at him, and he raises his eyebrow suspiciously. “When was the last time you prayed, Sansa?”

A look akin to shame washes over her face, flushing her cheeks ( _more blood, another stain,_ he thinks, and shudders slightly). “I have not seen a heart tree since Winterfell. And Alayne Stone was not a Northerner -- there was no need for her to pray to the Old Gods.”

The name sends a chill through Jon’s body, a rush of cold to his own icy core, for he hates to think of the girl she calls Alayne. When he thinks of her he thinks of Petyr Balish, of the man touching his sister -- although Alayne wasn’t his sister, wasn’t someone he knew -- of the death and cruelty she had experienced when she was still half a child.

But she is no longer a child, not now, he has seen that time and time again. She hasn’t been a child for years, and neither has he. It pains him to think of the little green boy he has been back in Winterfell, when he had thought that he was hard and strong simply because he was a bastard, simply because he was from the North. He had never seen a winter, never seen murder and betrayal and starvation, had never felt the pain of his brother’s swords as they took his life, only for him to rise from ashes and dust the next morn. He pitied the little green lad, playing at war with Robb, acting as if he was grown, as if he could protect himself, as if he could survive.

War is a game, true enough, but it is not a game for children with wooden swords and bright eyes. He has learned this, as has Sansa, and that is how they stand, the last two, alive.

“There is no shame in that,” he assures her, kneeling in the snow at her side. “Not even the gods could have helped you -- you helped yourself. There is a time to turn to them, and you did what you had to have done. And it paid off, for you are here while the rest are gone.” She looks away from him then, towards the tree and into the distance, and he thinks she might have begun to pray. It is only when she speaks that he realizes she hasn’t started, not quite yet, and her words affect him much more than they should.

“Will you help me?”

So he does.

xx

They return to his quarters and dine in near-silence, a silence much more comfortable than that in the woods. She no longer has a pained look on her face, but is humming and smiling contentedly to herself as she buries her hand in the scruff of Ghost’s neck. The direwolf has taken a liking to her, much to Jon’s shock, although now he supposes it makes sense. They have all been connected, the Stark’s and their wolves, although Sansa lost hers too young, too fast.

(They all lost things when they were young -- for Jon it was his mother, lost before he knew her, lost before he had her at all. It was his father and his life and his name, but that is a name he no longer needs. He is a Stark, a Snow, and thinks he is quite glad he lost them in the first place).

When she is finished with her meal he looks at her deep, knowing he must tell what must be told. Although he supposes he is not lying, not really, to hide the truth feels just as wrong, and the way she looks at him with round eyes so full of trust is more pain to him than any he has known before. So he takes her hand in his, a gesture that is common between them now, simple, nothing, and she looks at him as if she is giving him all of herself, he finds that now is as good a time as any.

“Sansa, there is something I must tell you,” he finds it hard to get the word out, what he is about to say feeling foreign and strange on the tip of his tongue, and for a moment he worries he will not be able to say it at all. “I have been lying to you for some time now, and it is only fair to you that you know the truth. I owe you that.”

The look in her eyes is not one of worry or confusion, but of amusement. “Is this about you being a Targaryen? That is not news to me, Jon,” she says, laughter in her voice, “I have known of that since the Vale. You would be surprised at the things Petyr learns.”

And he _is_ surprised, although he does not want to show it much, but moreover he is relieved. Relieved that she is not angry with him, relieved that she now knows, understands what they are and who he is and who he will always be (a Stark, a Snow, always, never anything but, he never has been. There is no fire running through his veins, only cold and frost, and she must know this as well as he).

And he is relieved because now she knows, they both know, and now he can no longer feel guilt for the other things he feels.

The things a brother may not feel for a sister -- but they are not brother and sister now, are they? The things a man may feel for a woman, a wolf for his queen, and that is all that they have become.

So it is no shock to him when moments later they find themselves wrapped in his furs (he has not shared anyone’s furs, not since Ygritte, and in the dim candlelight he thinks she can see the woman’s face in Sansa’s, her passion hidden in features much more fine). It is no shock to either of them when his lips cover hers, warm and desperate and demading -- he has waited so long for this, for her and now is as good a time as any, better, the best.

Her hands are experienced, fingers lithe and skilled as they dance over his skin, gentle feathers brushing against his marred figure. It is a shocking comparison from his own hands, rough and bruising, and he would apologize for his behavior, beg her forgiveness, but she seems to enjoy his touch as thoroughly as he enjoys hers, and that is all he really wants, for her to enjoy this, to find pleasure and comfort in his hands, his arms, his kisses and embraces. There will be bruises on her pale flesh tomorrow, of that he does not doubt, but they will be signs of his love, his caring, his passion.

Sansa pulls his breeches off with the expertise of one who is clearly no maiden, and the though both angers and comforts him. He is not ruining or shaming her -- she wants this as much as he, and he is in no place to deny her of what she wants.

Their sex is rough and messy and beautiful and flawless, a shockwave of feeling hitting him a soon as he enters her. This is not what he imagined; it is better, harder and faster and with more desperation than anything he has experienced before. The way he fits inside her cannot be described in words, two pieces of a puzzle, separated forever only to be brought together in such a way that causes her to chant his name like the prayers they had recited only hours before, causing him to moan like a virgin boy, causing her to tense around him with a cry that almost sounded inhuman ( _wolflike,_ he will later think, and smile at the thought) and him to follow not long after.

He holds her after, arms strong around her waist, in the silence that they have grown so accustomed to. Sansa’s hair tickles his face, the strands of red like fire in the candlelight ( _kissed by fire,_ and she must have been to have survived the war).

In the silence they lay, bodies warm and blood cold, and though he knows neither of them will never be home, will never feel a mother’s touch or a brother’s embrace, in her he has found it at last.


End file.
